Who's afraid of Valentine's Day?

If you have a partner, Valentine's Day can be a high-stress day: Figuring out the gift, how much is trying too hard, how much isn't trying enough, where to go, what to do, what not to do, and above all what to wear. But if you're single February 14 is a miserable day indeed, an interminable blizzard of flowers and chocolates. And those puppy faced people in lovey-dovey ads don't help either. So if you'd like to shy away from the syrupy romantic Valentine's Day movie-watching, fear not -- Here's a liost of movies for your weekend wallowing...

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
The granddaddy of all "to hell with love" movies, and still possibly the nastiest of the bunch. Mike Nichols (making, shockingly, his directorial debut) brilliantly adapts Edward Albee's searing play about a horror show of a married couple (played, voyeuristically enough, by horror show of a married couple Richard Burton and Liz Taylor) and their hellish evening of abuse and games-playing with a younger, not-quite-ruined-yet pair, played by George Segal and Sandy Dennis.

Blue Valentine
What's more painful than watching a married couple fall apart? Having it cruelly juxtaposed with how they got together. That's the bittersweet conceit at the heart of this brilliantly played downer. Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams are the hipster couple who just can't keep it together in this Oscar-nominated indie which avoids painting either party as "the bad guy", making it all that much harder to endure.

The War of Roses
Anyone who watched this black comedy in their formative years will have probably grown up with a rather distorted view of marriage. Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner glefully tore apart their Romancing the Stone chemistry with this darkly funny look at a divorcing couple fighting to the death over who gets their house. Nastier than most contemporary comedies, it crescendos with a cynically violent climax. Scared of marriage?

Revolutionary Road
Anyone fooled into thinking this might be a dreamy Titanic re-union will have their hopes ripped apart by this uncompromising drama. Kate Winslet and Leonardo Di Caprio star as a couple whose lofty ambitions are worn down by life in suburbia. As they realise it's all they'll ever have, they start to turn on each other. Helping to confound the downbeat view on marriage, all the surrounding couples in the film are also quietly falling apart. It's also works brilliantly as an excuse to never ever leave the city.

Closer
This sharp drama follows the love lives of four flawed Londoners whose attractive exteriors belie a set of coal-like hearts. They take it in turn to lie and cheat their way into and out of each other's beds, leaving you questioning why anyone would want to attempt a relationship in the first place. Julia Roberts and Clive Owen's completely NSFW argument is the high/lowpoint.

Fatal Attraction
While there's surely a counter-argument for this one as it does suggest that cheating will only ever lead to graphic violence, Fatal Attraction is also a terrifying look at what might live behind a seemingly normal face. Michael Douglas learnt to keep it in his pants the hard way as Glenn Close turned his life upside down in this 80s classic. Also makes a solid case for asking all prospective dates for their views on small cuddly bunnies.

The Rules of Attraction
What's great about college is that there are so many options in the dating pool — thus ensuring that no one is actually into the same person who is into them. So it goes in Roger Avary's 2002 adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' novel, where a cast of astonishingly good-looking people spend two hours cheating, raping, rejecting, screwing each other over, getting high, getting blotto, and killing themselves.

Shame
This grim, uncompromising drama presents us with a character who's never celebrated Valentine's Day and probably never will. Unable to form any sort of emotional attachment with women, Michael Fassbender's protagonist focuses on sex, sex and on weekends, a bit of sex. Presenting the idea that some people have childhoods that are so damaging that future relationships seem impossible, it's a chilly alternative to the Hollywood mantra that everyone has a happy ending.

(500) Days of Summer
Despite the twee hipster trappings, this 2009 offering is actually neither rom or com. It's a surprisingly painful look at unrequited love through the eyes of Joseph Gordon Levitt's love-lorn lead. Who can blame him for ignoring all the signs and desperately trying to make Zooey Deschanel love him back? She's one of the founding members of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl set. She's built to make men crumble. Ignoring the final face-slap scene (look, he's met a girl called Autumn!), it's a bitter pill.

The Weatherman
If Hollywood has taught us anything about love, it's that when you want to fix a relationship, you can do it. Ideally within 90 minutes. What The Weather Man teaches us it that sometimes, no matter what you want or how you go about getting it, it's just too late. Nicolas Cage's tragic lead wants his wife and children back but they don't want him. Cue a pathetic, cruelly funny set of failed attempts to win them over. One of Nicolas Cage's most underrated performances. The lack of distractingly long hair helps.